Philosophy is not a Mickey Mouse degree

In response to my previous post, someone brought my attention that BA in Combined studies in my own School of Mathematics also includes a number of seemingly bizarre combinations:

This honours programme leads to the degree of BA, although the Mathematics component can make up about two thirds of the overall course. Other subjects will usually be selected from the following areas:

Historical studies

Philosophy

Languages

Literary studies and Drama

Linguistics and related subjects

Classical Civilisation and Art History

Religious Studies and Comparative Religion

Built and Natural Environments

Jewish Studies

Film Studies

All these (with a possible exception of Built and Natural Environments and Film Studies which may have a different justification, and I do not want to argue against or for them) belong to a range of degree courses that I myself on many occasions proposed for paring with Mathematics: they are essay-based disciplines with strong emphasis on working with original sources and reading very hard texts. A combination of Mathematics with Philosophy produces a provably numerate and literate graduate who has good job prospects and, which is even more important, who had a chance to develop the intellectual and emotional core of his or her personality.

I understand that it was great Sir Christopher Zeeman who, when he founded Mathematics Institute at Warwick, pioneered combined courses like Mathematics with Art History.

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Actually Chris Zeeman did more than that. He defined any other subject than Pure Maths, taught by the University, as Applied Maths.

Thus it was common for maths students to study languages, something that later on became particularly useful when reading research papers.

He was influenced by the US system where it is unusual to specialise in one subject and allowed students (subject to timetabling) to pursue any other subject they were interested in.

Personally I wasn’t that adventurous and wasn’t keen on essay writing so choose subjects like Mathematical Economics (tauht by the Economics department) and Symbolic Logic (taught by the Philosphy department). Many of my friends chose to study French.